Document searches are frequently conducted to find answers to questions that arise, or to conduct research regarding an issue or topic. Due to the large number of electronic documents available, document searches can be complex, time consuming, and frustrating. Additionally, many searches may not be effective in accessing the desired results.
Currently, users can conduct document searches via known search engines, such as Yahoo! Search, owned by Yahoo! Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., or Google Search, owned by Google, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. Conventional document searches rely on a user's knowledge of the desired results to construct a query appropriate for accessing the most relevant information. The Yahoo! and Google search engines each present results as a list of documents that are ordered by relevance in descending order. Depending on the number of search results returned, the results are provided on multiple pages that a user must review. Additionally, to access documents, a user clicks on document links, choosing whether to open them in a separate tab from the search results or the same tab. A user must then separately review the documents, either by switching among tabs or going back and forth among documents and the search results in the same tab. Accordingly, the user-interface (UI) of the current search engines fail to provide the user with an overview of a search space and guide her to choose the relevant query terms. In addition, current search UIs do not provide ability to track the browsing process, which makes it difficult to estimate when they have researched a topic enough to know when they have achieved a sufficiently complete understanding of the topic.
Therefore, there is a need for a more effective way to visualize the search results to allow the user to obtain an overview of the search space, identify key topics and formulate concepts, and track progress of reviewing the results. Preferably, the search query is generated visuospatially and the results are provided via a visuospatial layout with which the user can interact to review the material and refine the search.